Out of the Mist
by Morgane Lurker
Summary: Thomas and Barbara, 1968-1970.
1. Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling

_Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time_  
 _Out of the mist your voice is calling, 'tis twilight time_  
 _When purple-colored curtains mark the end of day_  
 _I'll hear you, my dear, at twilight time_

 _July 1970_

Bubbles streamed up under the dock where Barbara Jagger sat, paddling her feet in the cool water. Suddenly a strong grip closed around her ankle.

"Tom!" Laughing, she drew her legs up under her. The diver surfaced and removed his breathing mask.

"I found something."

"Come up here and tell." Holding on to Tom's elbow, Barbara helped him climb out of the water.

When settled on the boards with a cup of coffee from the thermos, Tom opened his fist to reveal a small, shiny pebble. Barbara's eyes widened.

"Gold? How in the world…?" She picked up the piece to look closer.

"A treasure." Tom sipped at his steaming drink. "Underwater."

"Well, they say it is a magic lake." Barbara's smile warmed him. He could write a poem about how the moonlight bathed her features - but then he'd have to get up, wriggle out of the diver suit, fetch a pen and paper... Disturb the very scene he wanted to capture.

There was another reason for his reluctance as well.

 _June 1968_

At first they seemed like chance happenings. Newly moved into Bird Leg Cabin and inspired by the vast lake outside, Thomas wrote the poem _Wondrous Waters_ about iridescent fishes swimming in a rapid river. Two days later, a local angler caught an exotic-looking fish that shimmered like carnival glass in sunlight. Tom gave the newspaper paragraph only a cursory glance. He'd made friends with two rockers-in-training from town, and would meet up with them in an hour.

As the summer meandered on their triumvirate fished or solved world problems over a few beers, but once the Anderson brothers persuaded Tom to try "shrooms". The next twelve hours he lay splayed out on the couch, watching brilliant shapes crash, reform, and stretch into golden cobwebs across the ceiling. Flourished words revealed themselves in the wood grain. The episode resulted in one of his best poems to date. Yet he held no interest in taking another trip: that first onset of absolute conviction that spiders crawled under his skin overshadowed the later excitement.

Along with drugs and rock, Old Norse mythology held the Anderson brothers' keen interest. They would retell its legends as vividly as if they were self-experienced. Tom soon nicknamed them Tor and Odin. Influenced by their enthusiasm he wrote _The Thunder Wagon,_ a poem where the infamous thunder god drove his wagon through the skies with a force that made lightning split trees down the middle.

Barely had Tom finished it when the brothers, on their way home from a late-night gig, crashed their Thunderbird into a young birch. Miraculously enough they escaped the smoking wreck with only minor injuries, and could leave the ER at dawn. They felt high and invincible, but Tom threw his poem straight in the wastebasket. For a long time afterwards his stomach turned whenever he passed the crash site, and saw how the collision had snapped the slim tree trunk.

The Anderson brothers took it in stride, and went on to devote the last weeks of summer to the art of moonshine-brewing.

Fall came, and Tom withdrew to work on his next title. The cabin had more rooms than it made sense for a single occupant to keep illuminated, and one gloomy evening he carried the typewriter down to the kitchen. It felt foolish to sit in a secluded study when no sound but the wind disturbed the silence. In the kitchen lamp's soft circle of light he wrote about an unnamed love interest - a benevolent queen, a muse, a soulmate - bringing some spark into his life.

Cynthia Weaver finally persuaded him to leave the cabin for Deerfest. "Come to the harvest feast, Tom, you'll turn into a hermit out here."

At last he gave in, threw on a jacket and tie and wandered down to the civic center. He didn't expect Providence to strike.

He got the three-time winner of Miss Deerfest as partner at the table. At the sight of her, Tom all but thumped down on his chair. Even crowned in cheap tinsel she stunned him, with wavy dark hair framing a face as smooth and chiseled as an ivory sculpture. Her blue eyes twinkled at him.

"Thomas Zane." He offered his hand, and when she shook it his whole arm tingled.

"Barbara Jagger. No relation to the musician, though."

"I would've guessed at Liz Taylor's younger sister." His own boldness surprised him.

She laughed good-naturedly, "You're flattering me, Mr Zane."

What began as polite small talk carried on till the tables were cleared and placed along the walls to make room for a dance floor. A band struck up. Melancholic guitars, a humming bass line, the vocalist singing about heavenly shades of night and his love calling out of the mist. Tom raked up every spark of bravado and asked Barbara for a dance. To his utter and pleased surprise, she accepted.

Barbara's pageant-sash fluttered around her, the tinsel crown at a jolly angle. Her soft curves pressed against him. She complimented his sense of rhythm. Still he assumed she'd change partner after the customary two dances, and the thought made his shoulders stiffen up. Many potential admirers sat in the bar. Barbara just patted his arm when he mentioned this. Once she slipped away for a few turns with Pat Maine, but came back when the band played the opening bars of _Save the Last Dance For Me_. Tom's feet touched the floor, but his mind was on cloud nine.

In dawning April he helped carry her belongings up to Bird Leg Cabin. They were few and light, yet the ease with which Barbara made herself at home surprised him. _She_ made the cabin feel like home, with her voice and laughter. Tom gave up the illusion of a poet's need for absolute solitude. He needed company, to hear someone else's thoughts than his own. Barbara inspired him. His creative vein ran high again, words flowing fresh and free like a spring flood. _In Her Dreams To Prevail_ sprouted into a mixture of short fantasy stories and passionate poems. He wanted to amuse her and tell her how important she was to him.

"You are my muse, you know that?" Tom professed when Barbara with blushing cheeks read his lyrical declarations of love.

Indeed, he fell fast for her. But the love he gave and received was not like the fickle, all-consuming fires in his youth. When it steadied it was like a brick hearth, grounded, warm without burning him. He'd never felt so cherished and at ease with someone as with Barbara.

The Anderson brothers came back from the club gigs downstate. They grumbled a bit about Tom's quick shift from footloose and fancy-free to settled man, but let it slide once they realized Barbara still 'let him out' to fish. They had succeeded in their pursuit to make moonshine, and experimented with various ingredients.

"Reckon you can make moonshine outta that?" Odin gestured at the lake. Tom lowered the axe he chopped wood with to gaze at the waves lapping against Diver's Isle. The green surface deepened to blackness thicker than that of a humus-filled mere. Probably the lake was full of … well, what?

Thus it was with some hesitation he took the bottle of "homemade medicine" handed to him when the brothers left for Woodstock. Not knowing what to do with the bottle, Tom put it in the back of his desk drawer and continued to work on _Mimer's Well_.

For his next project Tom hired an assistant writer. Though not from the county, young Emil Hartman's avid interest in hunting soon gained him a thorough knowledge of it. Within a few weeks he'd joined the circle of hunters who slurped coffee at Oh Deer Diner during off-season. All of them were his seniors by decades, but they liked a youngster listening to their hunting stories - unaware that Emil fished for local tricks of the trade.

Thomas's writing came to an abrupt halt in late November, when he finished _The Mischievous Reflection_. The poem was based on old folklore about a faceless demon living in a lake. Impish in nature, it took on the appearance of anyone who looked into the depth. Once disguised, it went to town to steal chickens and burn down barns.

The demon's name was Scratch, and one overcast morning Tom spotted it under the bridge up to Diver's Isle. The lake lay unusually still, ready to freeze over. Half-expecting to see it happen he leaned over the wooden rail, his silhouette mirrored by the dark green surface.

His reflection raised its hand a fraction; startled, he dropped the morning paper in the water. The image cracked and vanished. Tom stumbled along the bridge, leapt up the steps to the house, heart in his throat. The half-forgotten bottle rolled forth when he pulled out the desk drawer in his study, and he downed a hearty swig to numb his nerves.

It was like the photo negative of his drug trip. Slowly the web of connections grew tangible. Tendrils stretched between memories, thin enough to be swept aside with a swift wave. But this time Tom considered them.

He wrote of strange fishes, and an exotic kind swam up the river. He wrote of Tor's thunder wagon, and the Anderson brothers crashed their Thunderbird into a tree. Poems about Mimer the giant were followed by sightings of Bigfoot, Will-o'-the-wisp by a UFO report. A chill spread in his chest.

It was the culmination of his fantasy writings. At last it began to dawn upon Tom that these were no chance happenings. Somehow his works of fiction connected to reality in a most inverted sense.

Emil suggested it was just performance anxiety taking its toll on him, but from that day Tom stayed away from the typewriter. All winter Emil tried to nudge and coax him in its direction, with hints that his avid fans were growing impatient. The assistant writer himself grew edgy, watching the deer season open and close while he waited around for a first draft to rewrite.

 _Strange fishes glide in the depths,_

 _unfamiliar flowers glow on the shore;_

 _I have seen red and yellow and all the other colours, -_

 _but the gaudy gay sea is the most dangerous to look upon,_

 _it makes one thirsty and wide-awake for waiting adventures:_

 _what happened in the fairy-tale will happen also to me!_

\- Edith Södergran, 1916

* * *

A/N: The fic title and lyrics are taken from The Platters' version of Twilight Time. The poem at the end is what inspired Tom's first run-in with the lake's powers. The second incident ties in with another fic of mine, Godspeed, which I'll soon upload to Ao3.

I started on this already in 2010, which in part might explain any taste of purple prose this fic has even though I've tried to edit out the worst. In any case, I've had fun writing this - getting to research 60's pop culture, poetry and many other little things. Hopefully posting the first chapter will prompt me to finish this fic before the end of 2016.


	2. Out of the Mist Your Voice Is Calling

_Here, in the afterglow of day, we keep our rendezvous beneath the blue_  
 _And, in the same and sweet old way I fall in love again as I did then_

* * *

Of course Barbara noticed Tom's change of mood. This was no common writer's block, for he filled whole notebooks with short-hand scribbles but never typed them up. "Too definite" he said, and claimed that it left no room for polishing or the flight of imagination. He lied, of course.

In truth his mind sagged under all ideas, and he longed to write till his fingers ached. For a while Tom tried to channel this surplus imagination into a gossip column under pseudonym in Weaver's newspaper, but parroting hearsay about the Beatles did little to ease his mind. All this restrained creativity grated on him, but lying to Barbara griped him even more.

To dispel these thoughts Tom spent more time with her, dining on the porch or diving in the lake. In the silent void he was as cut off from the world as an astronaut in space. Only Barbara could reach him there, as she glided like a mermaid through the waves above.

Yet the love poems rankled Tom the most. Were they recording real feelings, or mere fiction come true? Was Barbara but a pawn that fate put in his way, and her free-flying affection attaching arbitrarily to him like a spider's thread? Would these feelings wane if he put down the pen?

To Tom's grateful relief, they survived. In the end, it helped him reconcile with the thought of never writing again.

The crux was money. How would they pay for heat and food? He couldn't demand that Barbara provided for both of them, nor leave her without a roof over her head if the cabin must go. She trusted him. She'd endured enough when their unmarried cohabiting became the talk of the town.

 _In Her Dreams_ did well, yet not good enough to afford a lifelong break from authorship. Reluctant to seem greedy, Tom broached the subject of profit with Emil only once. Since his assistant writer had more business sense than Tom, the poet had let him take care of bank errands and routine calls to the publisher.

"That's the problem with being a breakthrough poet. You're critically acclaimed, but not read by the masses. Or should I say, people sneak-read your works to see if they're worth four bucks - and when they've skimmed it through, they put it back on the store shelf. People these days only want sex and violence for a dime."

"And what am I gonna do about that?" Tom shrugged. "I don't feel like writing explicit stuff."

"Write more. Show them you're a poet laureate in training. They'll buy your books then."

Tom wavered. No more writing, he'd vowed; the results were unpredictable. What if he wrote about falling stars, or Ragnarok?

But what if he wrote about a million dollar treasure hidden somewhere in Bright Falls, then went looking for it once the story came true? Modern currency buried in the forest would look too much like a robber's haul, but he'd heard that the county museum paid you plenty for a valuable archeological find. In an old mining town like Bright Falls, it wouldn't be too incredible if two miners with dreams of the good life had struck gold - and loaded a chest full of the precious nuggets in a rowboat and set course for the other end of Cauldron lake, when the half-rotten deck suddenly gave in and the whole craft went down in seconds...

He was at it again, drawing threads from what he knew and spinning them into tales of which the lake became the backdrop.

* * *

 _July 1970_

"Dear, you look so troubled".

Her words called him back to reality and his cooling coffee. With effort he parted the fog of thoughts.

"Aw, just headache. Happens sometimes when the water's cold." He managed a smile. This was no time to brood, when his idea had worked and the only thing left was to raise the treasure.

Barbara wrapped her arms round herself. "I'm freezing, too. Let's get inside."

Together they climbed up to the cabin, its illuminated windows casting planes of light on the boards. A relief that had eluded Tom for a very long time settled in his bones.

* * *

"Morning honey." Warm lips to his temple. "I'm going for a swim. Pancake batter's in the making, so I won't be long."

"Mmmh…" Diving always brought this deep, drowsy sleep. "Take care."

"Think you could make coffee till I'm back?"

"Mmh, yeah."

"Good." Her hand slid through his hair as she withdrew. Squinting, he could just make out her slender figure by the foot-end of their bed as she shed clothes and put on her swimsuit.

On the porch, Barbara turned on the radio. Soft-voiced singers, exotic dance rhythms, she liked them all. The only music she felt hesitant about was the kind which seemed to drag both its performers and listeners down into depression and drug abuse.

"You're such a mother-hen, always worried about everyone" Joy had once remarked in jest. "I bet Tom gets really pampered at home."

"Oh, when he looks too happy I send him out to chop a few fathoms of wood."

Joy knew she was joking. Tom happily chopped wood and shoveled snow, because it helped clear his thoughts. In fact he'd been very busy around the house of late, she thought with the usual twinge of worry.

Peaches-and-cream-colored clouds forebode the sunrise. Below lay Lake Cauldron - cold, clear, and impossibly deep. While its scenic surroundings attracted hikers and photographers, the lake itself did not tempt to romantic strolls in the shore water or playful splashing with swimmies. Like the color black absorbed all light without paling, the lake remained cool and crisp even during long heat waves. The only person besides Tom and Barbara that swam here was a retired, humorless major living across the lake. The children of Bright Falls preferred the water-filled sandpits a few miles outside town.

She would just try and have a look at the treasure, then get back and eat breakfast with Tom. Barbara let her bathrobe fall to the boards and eased into the water, breath held between her teeth. She cleft the surface with long, sweeping strokes - seen from above, a speck in a giant, matted eye. It was difficult to say where Tom descended last night, but over two-hundred swim strokes later Barbara slowed to tread water and glance over her shoulder. Far enough – she'd have to start looking now, or risk running tired with the dock out of reach. She took a deep breath and dove.

There it was, incredible like one of the Anderson brothers' fishing stories. Strewn over a rock face, gold glimmered with a spectral shine in the lightless lake. How it had gotten here was a mystery, even more so how Tom could dive here near-daily and not spot it until now.

A light headiness crept upon her; time to ascend for air. With two strokes she broke the surface.

The mist had left the shores and drawn in over the lake. Typical Cauldron Lake weather; once on a particularly foggy morning, Tom had remarked that they "lived in a pan of porridge." Barbara decided to head back, before he got worried. She could hear the radio noise, though weak and static-ridden, and set off towards it. That battery did not fare well from damp nights on the porch.

The music died altogether. She halted in confusion. Had Tom stepped out and turned it down? Left with a dense wall of fog ahead, Barbara called out to her companion.

"Tom? Tom, don't shut off the radio, I need it to-"

A wave struck her. She whirled around in the cold murk, barely made it back up before the next one crashed over her with deafening force.

"Tom! Help!" She screamed, water streaming down her face. "Help! Help! Tho-mas!"

The radio. She could hear it echo over the lake, as if someone had turned up the volume to block out her frantic screams. Her ears did not hear the lyrics anymore, just mindless bawls. Waves weltered over her like stampeding beasts, blinded her, pulled her down under. Her hands shot towards the surface, grasped at thin air.

Hoping she'd float to the surface if she just stopped struggling, Barbara hung on a moment beyond the very last.

The maelstrom swept her into the abyss.

* * *

Quietude.

"Barbara?" Thomas came down the stairs into the kitchen. "Barbara?" Maybe she still did her laps along the dock. He dipped his thumb in the bowl of pancake batter to have a taste on the sly. Boy, could Barbara bake. He half expected her to come in from the hall and wave her finger at him in jest: "You're a proper one for sweet things!"

No note on the kitchen table. That meant she wouldn't be gone for long. He put the percolator on the stove and sat down to wait. Perhaps she'd dashed off to borrow a cup of sugar.

Ten-thirty. Morning paper finished, coffee poured into a thermos. She'd probably met with a friend on the way, stopped to chat. Fully possible.

When the clock passed eleven-thirty, he grew worried. Something was off.

"Hello Cynthia, it's Tom. Is Barbara there…? Oh. Okay. Well if you see her, let me know." He put the phone back in its cradle.

His imagination began to concoct things – maybe her bike got stolen, and she had to walk home. Or she'd been hit by a drunk-driver and lay unconscious in hospital. But a brief call to doc Nelson disproved Tom's suspicions **.**

Noon. He breathed too fast, yet he forced himself to slowly circle the cabin and look on the porches and in the front yard, in the tool shed and the earth cellar, high and low. Her bike stood leaned against the wall. Had she walked to town? Maybe she'd come home just now? He went inside again, called out, searched every room. He found the dress she'd been wearing still hanging in the bathroom.

And all the while a voice in his head kept asking, "Has she even climbed out of the water?"

On his umpteenth round to the lake-side porch, Tom's ears picked up a quiet murmur. Subdued music wafting from the radio. When he leaned down to switch it off he glanced over the railing.

"Oh, no-"

Shock stabbed through him. Barbara's bathrobe lay at the edge of the dock, its sleeve waving in the water as if it fished round for her.


	3. Fingers of Night

_Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill me like days of old_  
 _Lighting the spark of love that fills me with dreams untold_  
 _Each day I pray for evening just to be with you..._

 _Together at last at twilight time._

* * *

The police dragged the lake. Their chopper droned through the air and neighbors searched the lake shores all day, but no trace of Barbara.

Ten past three in the morning officer Breaker took a seat opposite Tom Zane at the kitchen table. The wracked man stared emptily into his coffee mug, the thick blanket round his shoulders almost engulfing him. They'd almost lost track of him as well when he stalked deeper and deeper into the woodlands, bellowing out his beloved's name. Something about it brought to mind a distraught deer buck.

"I'm sorry Tom, but we're gonna have to call the search off for tonight. Visibility's too low."

"Have you looked for unknown cars in the area?" Tom struggled to get out of the blanket nest. "She might've been kidnapped-"

"We'll follow every lead, Tom." Breaker pushed him down on the seat again with a mild yet firm hand. "Get some rest. There's still a chance she'll turn up." But the officer didn't say out loud what he deep down feared.

Breaker hesitated to leave Tom alone in this state. You never knew what shocked people could do. The poet's assistant writer (Hartman, was it?) lingered in the doorway, and he decided to take the young man aside.

"Can you stay here tonight?"

Hartman gave his shoulder a precocious pat. "Don't worry, officer. I'll look after him."

* * *

When the tail lights of the last police cruiser blinked out of sight, Emil turned to Zane.

"Go lie down, Tom - I'll wake you up right away if something happens."

Tom shook his head. He didn't feel tired. And if he somehow fell asleep, it would become a distance between now and tomorrow. Then Barbara would be part of the past, not a living person whom they still had a chance to find alive and well, sheltered under a ponderosa because she couldn't…

His thoughts balked.

"I'm really sorry about this." Emil sat down in the vacant seat. "I know you loved her very much, and this loss is obviously harrowing for all of us. But as your friend and temporary caretaker, I think right now you need some quiet-"

"So be."

Silence pressed against the walls of the room. Thoughts seemed to rise within the poet, until they finally overflowed into the world of sound.

"I wish I could have this undone." Tom's voice was tense and thin, trapped in his throat.

"Write about it," Emil said.

"…What?" Tom's gaze flew up to his face.

"It will help."

The corners of Tom's lips turned upwards in a joyless grimace. "Emil, don't be foolish. You're a commendable assistant, but you're no shrink. You've never shown any interest in therapeutic writing."

"As a matter of fact I took a correspondence course in psychology last winter. I had to look for other career-options when you didn't get a word on paper." The hint of indignation in Emil's voice made Zane's eyes shift just a hint.

"Tom." An apologetic hand cupped Tom's shoulder. "The kind of help I'm talking about is far greater than any therapy ever could ever bring you. I'm talking about bringing Barbara back."

Tom's gaze shifted to a spot on the wall. It felt like he'd cross a point of no return if he met Emil's eyes.

Above his head the man began to talk about the old hunters in town. Of how some of them shared with him the legend of the lake. How it held special powers that affected its surroundings, and a person with vivid imagination could harness these powers. Even use them for great good.

Tom wanted to laugh bitterly and dismiss it as a ghost story. Yet he felt compelled to listen. He wanted to know what had made a chronic pragmatist like his assistant writer make a turnabout. These urban legends - about Lover's Peak, the birds, the lake…. They echoed his own experiences. The Anderson brothers. Mr Scratch. Things he'd told himself happened due to his own prophecies and creations.

"Surely you'd want Barbara to think you really did everything to save her?" Emil dipped his head. His gaze was sympathetic but grave. "Or will you spend the rest of your life asking 'what if'?"

Tom could not argue with that. Not when he truly wanted to save her.

Emil pushed pen and paper towards him. "Write about it. As you said yourself, if anything it's a therapeutic activity."

* * *

As soon as the horizon grayed, Tom sent Emil off with strict orders not to return until he called. He must set to work.

For days Tom scribbled, scratched out, searched for words and hammered them out on the typewriter. When tears dimmed his eyes and sobs nearly choked him, he was reminded of what Barbara must've felt in those last moments, and it drove him forward to grind out yet another stanza. If it could bring Barbara back, he had to try.

He wrote in a tunnel-vision trance, cutting at phrases like a miner at rocks. When words failed him he sketched the images he wanted to summon. In them Barbara rose from the lake, swept in gauzes of night mist under a majestic moon.

There was only one hoop to jump through; the legends said to obtain what you wanted, you must give something in return. Balance bliss with misery, exchange woe for well. But what? He could sacrifice anything for Barbara, but he had nothing of enduring value – the Lake had taken what he cherished most.

Time. He'd wait as many agonizing months or years as it took to see Barbara return. The longing and anxiety must more than balance his wish.

When the third day neared its end the final word was on paper. Under different circumstances he'd put it aside for two weeks, let the soup simmer so to speak. But this was a matter of Barbara's life.

Tom put the last sheet in the heap **.** It could be imagination let loose in his exhausted brain, but he thought he felt a sort of shift in the air as his words took effect.

* * *

He had not expected it to happen so soon, if ever. Perhaps he should have seen it coming, when night frost covered the ground in August.

The moon was not the usual jovial lantern that hung under the verandah-roof this time of the year. No, it hovered over the surface of the deep, an abnormal marble giant seeming ready to collide with the Earth. Tom could almost count its craters.

"Just like in the picture," he mumbled. He pulled on his coat and went out to take up watch on the dock.

Tom stared out over the waves until they became mere undulating lines of grey and black. In every crest he spotted a pale arm, in every crash dark curls sweeping over curved shoulders.

She climbed onto the dock.

For a moment he thought the waves clung to her and threatened to pull her back into the depths. Then he saw the billow of a dark gown round her thighs.

"Tom." She smiled, but her eyes remained shadowed. Water dripped from the hem of the skirt. He scrambled to his feet, pulled off his coat. Goosebumps prickled his bare forearms – she must be freezing. He wrapped his coat around her with near-reverent movements, and led her back to the cabin with its sole light in the window.

* * *

He couldn't say exactly when he realized this was not his Barbara anymore.

His grandfather once remarked that loving is easy when life is easy. Tom had thought his love would be stronger than that. He never reflected over what to do if Barbara turned into his own Bertha Mason.

And now it had happened. A supernatural entity, a single-minded, malicious force had twisted her to its own liking.

"Tom, how sweet of you!" Her smile must be wide enough to hurt, but her eyes ere lifeless like a doll's. Her embrace froze him to the spot. "You've never treated me to afternoon coffee before."

 _I brought Barbara breakfast in bed every Sunday, you…_

He braced himself. "I thought it was time for a change."

She released him, and he pulled out a chair. She sat down tentatively, eyeing the layer cake.

"I'll just get a knife for that."

Reaching behind him, Tom pulled out the rope hidden under the kitchen sink and threw it over her arms.

She shrieked and thrashed, tried to bite him, kicked wildly at the table legs. Cups rattled and turned over, coffee splashed onto the floor. He yanked her body flush against the chair back, livid flesh to wood, tendons like steel cables. Finally, right when he thought she'd break free, he managed to slip one rope end over the other and pull tight. Two more knots followed, before he sagged against the wall, gasping.

"…I found you out."

"Found out what?" She spat, tugging at her bonds.

"You're not my Barbara anymore."

"Tom, you jealous fool. There's nothing between me and Pat Maine."

"Don't act like you don't know what I mean!" He tried to sound brave, but his voice slipped up. "Who are you?"

"Don't be silly now." Her voice turned light and coaxing like with a hesitant pet. "Untie me, you naughty boy. I promise to be good." A smile toyed on her lips as they kept uttering sweet nonsense. "I will help you write your masterpiece. I will love you. Forever."

His response was to put the knife edge to her chest, right at the curving neckline of her dress.

"Give her back to me."

He winced when she psshed, sharp like oil in a frying pan.

"Why should I? You left nothing worthwhile in the balance. Time! I have that beyond your measure. At least now I have a vessel to move in."

He pulled the knife back and drove it in hilt-deep, wrenched it round. She screamed, a scream void of humanity, pain or fear, enraged at his defiance. He carved blindly until the blade met the back of the chair, and he threw the knife aside and vomited on the kitchen rug.

* * *

It lived without a heart.

After the first shocked seconds it shook the narrow shoulders and cackled at him.

He must send it back into the depths again – an enormous undertaking that would need the power of the very thing that fought to break free through his creations. This time he must seal the plan with something of weight.

His own life.

In that moment he could almost understand the reluctance of this creature, the struggle it would put up against his plans. For who wanted to work against their own existence? It was perverse. But he'd done enough damage with his life as it was.

Tom had built a career on describing emotion and ambience, but he'd never experienced a state of mind like the one when he pulled out the typewriter from behind the couch. Empty, dejected. No panic. Maybe he was in shock. Better strike while the iron was hot.

It was hard to write himself out of history, leave his friends now when he would have welcomed them the most. His poems that would've been included in school books as an example of contemporary poems, though his pride had always been tinged by awkwardness. That worry seemed so trifle and self-absorbed now.

And the heaviest thought of all - that no one here would remember Barbara's goodness and graces, her kindness and beauty.

The Presence stirred just faintly against its bonds. He'd expected to be wrestling with all limbs against a slithering, straggling storyline full of plot-holes. But it trotted doggedly on, like a prisoner to his cell.

Because it knows it will return. The gallows were for Tom.

He needed a saving clause.

* * *

He stood at the edge of the dock clad in the diving suit that was almost a submarine in itself, the creature tied to its arms. He took one step forward, and they plunged headlong into the depths.

The surface rose farther away for every second, and the fresh panic that could still make him struggle upwards stilled into leaden certainty in his chest as he lost track of the time and the feeling of falling. All he could hear was his breaths in the helmet. The cold of the depth seeped through the suit. Darkness stood like a wall outside the tiny window of his helmet.

Soon what little air there was in the suit would be used up. Tom only hoped the light he'd flung into the future would be bright enough. He thought of the shoebox left on the shore, how fragile and exposed to the elements it was. But he hadn't been able to slip anything greater through the loophole.

The pressure cracked the helmet glass, and cold water struck him out.


End file.
